


seven feet

by naruhoe



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Billy lives, M/M, the redemption arc that Billy Hargrove actually deserved
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-06
Updated: 2019-07-25
Packaged: 2020-06-23 15:32:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19704280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/naruhoe/pseuds/naruhoe
Summary: "Seven... feet."Something inside of Billy snaps. Snaps and rebounds, like a string breaking and coming back around to draw a bright line of blood across flesh. On the outside, Billy goes stock still, the awful black taint stopping its crawl across the pallor of his face, but inside... Inside, all he can see is the roll and crash of the waves, the white foam that it raises on the gold-flecked sand. He can taste the tang of salt on his lips. He smells the brine in the air."You told her... the wave was seven feet."





	1. one

_"Seven... feet."_

Something inside of Billy snaps. Snaps and rebounds, like a string breaking and coming back around to draw a bright line of blood across flesh. On the outside, Billy goes stock still, the awful black taint stopping its crawl across the pallor of his face, but inside... Inside, all he can see is the roll and crash of the waves, the white foam that it raises on the gold-flecked sand. He can taste the tang of salt on his lips. He smells the brine in the air.

_"You told her... the wave was seven feet."_

Billy is standing on a familiar shore. The sun nearly blinds him as he looks up, so he squints, raising a hand to shield his eyes. Shuffling his feet as he takes a disoriented step back, almost stumbling, he hears a whoop, then the patter and splash of small footsteps in the receding water. There is a small, soaked boy with skinny legs holding a very large surfboard running towards him- wait, no. Not towards him. Past him. Unconsciously, Billy finds himself turning to watch the kid's progress.

_"You ran to her on the beach."_

Her. Twirling, a laugh on her lips, mirth in her blue eyes. Billy- suddenly he can't breathe. He's choking, drowning. It tastes like salt in his mouth, like bile in the back of his throat. Tears prick at the corners of his eyes, but he won't blink, won't look away for fear that if he does, she'll be gone- gone, like packed bags in the middle of the night, like the glass of her pictures smashed and fractured, abandoned in the trash can.

_"There were seagulls."_

There were. They rise into the air in a cloud of beating wings and discordant squawking, scattering before the smiling little boy whose surfboard is too big for him.

 _"She wore a hat..."_ The voice from so very far away sounds choked. There's a wet sniffle. Billy barely hears it, can barely keep his eyes off of her, and his chest squeezes painfully as she laughs. Billy gasps faintly.

_The black clogging the veins of Billy's pale face recedes an inch more. His eyes are so very blue, and glossy with unshed tears._

_"...with a blue ribbon."_ It dangles between her fingers, a floppy straw hat encircled by a deep blue ribbon, frayed at the ends. _"A long dress..." It's white, thin and flows about her legs as the wind blows. "...with a blue and red flower."_ There it is, embroidered on the center of her chest. Her favorite. Her favorite dress.

 _"Yell- yellow sandals."_ The voice draws his attention to them, almost hidden against the slightly paler yellow of her hat with its blue ribbon. _"Covered in sand."_ She's barefooted. She'd never liked to wear shoes, even inside- his mother.

_"She was pretty." Billy swallows hard, long-lashed eyelids closing rather than let the tears fall, the corners of his mouth turning down. They brush his cheeks as he blinks, several sweat-soaked blond strands of hair falling across his brow as his head tilts down ever so slightly._

His mother.

"She was really pretty."

The girl snuffles again, two tears tracking down either sides of her cheeks, down into the damp hair at her temples. Billy... feels himself nod, the back of his throat closing, his eyes prickling. She is the source of the voice, he realizes, just as he begins to hear other sounds, bangs and pops.. a shrill scream. A roar. But he finds himself distracted by her voice again. Even more, he finds himself listening. "And you," He wants... He wants away from here, out of his crawling skin and the squirming in his chest. He wants to see her again, to hear the sound of the waves.

"You were happy."

The sea crashes around his calves, the tide sucking at his ankles. The boy laughs, smiles, and raises a hand to wave at her, so young and so carefree. _Happy_. Something touches the side of his face. He is cold, but the fingers are warm, and even though it burns his frostbitten flesh, he finds himself pressing into it as his eyelids close, unable to stop the tears from falling this time. He's so cold. Behind him, he hears another bang, and another roar, louder than the last. Something in his blood sings, answering it.

His eyes meet hers, and Billy sees her, truly sees her this time, for though his blood continues to hum, answering the call of the thing that stole _his mind_ from him, it is clear, now, as clear as when he was standing on that beach in California. She is just a child, barely as old as Max, and her dark eyes are filled with fear. There is a final bang. Silence. The light around them fades, and then... This roar shakes Billy to his very core.

His chest is going to explode. His heart is beating too fast, thumping too hard against the cage of his ribs. They exchange one last look, the dark-eyed girl and Billy Hargrove. Then- Billy stands, and turns to face Him. The thing opens its maw to scream, an ungodly shriek underlaid with the predacious timbre that is both like and completely dissimilar to the roar of a lion or some other great creature. Its gaping, tooth-studded maw stinks of carrion, of a thousand corpses of a thousand dead things. Billy finds that he cannot quite look away. Some part of him doesn't want to, the sick part of him that thrums and hums to the vibrations of the monster's shriek. But the other part of him? 

The grasping tentacle that shoots out of the monster's maw is intended for her, but Billy steps in front of her, catching it with both of his hands. The roar that leaves him is purely primal, the accumulation of the slow anger that's been building ever since he set foot in that damn foundry. "No!" He screams, feeling the bite of sharpened teeth and bone into the palms of his hands, cutting, ripping, but he won't let go. He refuses. This thing- this _monster_ has stolen his mind, taken him, _used_ _him_ to do its dirty work, and Billy is _done_. He won't let go, not until it fucking kills him.

Locked together, the two of them strain against one other, the monster to reach what lies behind Billy, and Billy- Billy fighting, just to feel alive.

The first tentacle impacts his side; it feels like being stabbed by a thousand tiny knives that all contract upon impact, ripping and tearing. Billy screams again, in pain, this time, not hearing the cries from behind him. He doesn't hear his name, doesn't recognize Max's voice. The second tentacle targets the other side, shredding the fabric of his shirt as soon as it makes contact. Billy cannot even scream this time, too consumed with keeping his grip on the slimy thing in his hands. He's bleeding, rivulets of red that go sliding down his forearms, falling in heavy droplets to the floor. He doesn't want to let go. He doesn't want to go.

The third and fourth slam into either side of his lower back. Billy is not conscious to feel the fifth, which takes him in the small of the back. Only the agony of the monster increasing the pressure around his sides as if it means to crush him gives him the cognition to realize that he's being lifted into the air, his feet leaving the ground as he slumps backwards, the red saturating his shirt, which sticks, warm and wet, to his skin. He doesn't hear the shrill cries of his name being called (" _Billy_!"), or even the sound of his own screams because it _hurts_. His eyes slide open almost dreamily, presenting him with a view of the monster, bare feet away and breathing its corpse breath into his face. He feels a flicker of fear.

And then... it shudders, utters a panicked roar unlike any of the others before, and, staggering back, unceremoniously lets go of its hold on Billy, who drops like a stone and hits his head hard on the concrete floor of the Starcourt Mall.

He's out like a light.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know he's an asshole but Billy didn't deserve this. So I guess I'll be writing my own redemption arc- no thanks to you, Duffer bros. Kudos and especially comments are always appreciated! I’d love to hear what you thought (:


	2. two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Three days later, Billy wakes up surrounded by small children.

Every square inch of his body hurts. His head? Fuzzy. Aching. His hands- god, why do his hands hurt so badly?? An attempt at flexing his fingers provokes unexpected pain from both hands. He cuts that out real quick. Billy wonders what the hell he did to cut his hands up last night. The hangover isn't a surprise, but he can't recall ever hurting his hands before. Allowing himself to lie in bed a few moments longer, he cracks an eyelid. Ugh. Too bright.

Wait.

Billy doesn't know that ceiling. In fact- he doesn't know where the hell he is, period. What the fuck. However, before the instinctual panic can set in, there's the sound of a door banging open and the loud clamor of several voices all trying to talk at the same time. Billy freezes, feigning sleep.

"-told you I didn't mean it! When I said 'different species' I _obviously_ meant-"

"Meant what, Lucas? There isn't exactly much room for interpretation in that statement!"

Billy knows that voice. He knows both of these voices. It's Maxine. And her- _ugh_ -boyfriend. Lucas Sinclair.

"Guys!"

The third is yet another voice that he knows, though with not quite the level of familiarity.

"Room for interpret- Why were you two even _listening_ anyways??"

"Hey, guys!"

"After all, I was under the impression that you were _all for_ letting El make her own decisions, so-"

" _GUYS_!" The final shout is so loud that Billy twitches despite his best efforts to remain still. It isn't a subtle twitch, either- rather, it's more like a jerk, one that seems to rattle the bed and pull all the muscles in his body. Speaking of muscles, it feels like he's been hit by a truck, specifically in the region of his lower back and abdomen.

"What??"

"He's awake."

"What?!"

Dead silence. Then footsteps- just one pair, thank god. They stop tentatively, just a foot or so away. She's standing by his bedside, Billy knows. "Billy?" Max asks, voice softer than usual. It sounds unnatural, somehow, to hear her so subdued. From the corner, he can make out the sound of furious whispering, though he doesn't care enough to try to decipher it.

Billy opens his eyes. The ceiling spins momentarily. The light stings, but he feels... warm. It's a good feeling. Turning his head slightly to the right reveals a worried-looking Max. Looking at her, her red hair haloed by the florescent light above her, she looks almost radiant. He's just about to open his mouth to ask where the hell he is when he sees the livid red mark marring the left side of her face. The pain is almost an afterthought. Billy all but lurches out of the bed, the visceral _rage_ he's feeling almost enough to mask the hot agony that erupts across his back and abdomen, much like the way that the room erupts around him. Max, of course, is the first one to act, pushing him back against the pillows- "What the hell are you doing??" Max demands, brows screwing into a scowl. 'You idiot' is clear in her tone.

"No way!"

"Dude, _shut up_!"

Billy barely hears any of it. He's not having any of it, pushing up against Maxine's hands, blue eyes bright, hot with anger. "Did he do this to you??" 'He' just a little word, such a small word for what it stands for- for both of them. Max flinches, a tiny little thing, so subtle that it's barely there, but Billy almost loses it right there. But then she meets his eyes, steady on, blue against blue. "No, Billy." She says, squaring her shoulders as if getting ready for a fight. "You did."


	3. three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Billy remembers. It isn’t pretty.

"No, Billy. You did."

The room is suddenly very quiet, far too quiet, actually. Billy stares at the red mark on Max's cheek, too perturbed to notice that his vision has gone a bit fuzzy around the corners and that a persistent beeping sound has started to fill the room-or perhaps it has always been there? He... what? The mark is a raised welt on her cheek, about four inches long and a vivid red against her pale skin, though it has just started to fade, turning an ugly yellowish-green color around the edges. In the end, however, it's not so much the welt that provokes the rush of memories as much as Max herself. Billy sees himself reflected in the pupils of her blue eyes, hair disheveled, mouth slightly open, and...

" _Billy- Billy, you don't have to do this," He sees himself reflected in the girl’s wide blue eyes as he advances forward. His leg is functioning badly. He hobbles as he walks- soon, this body will join the rest, once it has become too crippled to walk, too damaged to serve. It will not be long. His blood hums with the Call. This one has served its purpose. "Billy!" Her voice rises in panic when she realizes that he isn't stopping, isn't slowing, simply adjusting his gait as to get the most use out of the damaged appendage as possible as he closes the gap between them. "Your name is Billy, Billy Hargrove- You live on 4819 Cherry Lane, Billy, please, I'm Max, I'm your-" He backhands the red-haired girl across the face and feels nothing._

Billy blinks. Then he doubles over and vomits over the side of his bed. 

“Eugh..!" Says one of the boys.

“Sick..." Says the other, sounding morbidly fascinated.

”Shut _up_!!” That's Max's voice, barely audible through the ringing in his ears and the ever-increasing tempo of the machinery's furious beeping. "Billy? Billy?? Should I call the doctor?"

Ignoring the twinging, drug-dulled pain in his side as he continues to lean over the rail of the hospital bed, Billy retches again, eyes tightly shut. There is far less of it that comes up this time, but when he opens his eyes, it's... There is- It's _black_ and putrid-smelling. It smells evil. Like death. _Beep... Beep.. Beep--beep-beep-beep-_

 _He opens his eyes to the sight of a thousand teeth set into the slimy walls of a gaping maw. The smell would have him retching if he weren't suddenly so calm. It hurts, and he cries out as the pressure increases around his waist, crushing him- a thousand tiny knives gnawing at his flesh, contracting and cutting and crushing. The monster roars, and Billy somehow knows that it's_ looking _at him despite the lack of eyes. From the gaping maw, something emerges. It looks like a second mouth, opening to let out a sibilant hiss that makes the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. His blood sings, answering it-_

"-eart rate is 180 and rising-"

The lights are too bright. Billy struggles to sit up, but finds himself pressed back down by a blue-gloved hand. Sluggishly, he follows it with his eyes up the arm to the face- a man’s face, lined with age, and wearing a pair of horn-rimmed glasses over the bridge of his nose. He isn’t looking at him, or rather, he’s busy shining a bright light into Billy’s eyes. Billy attempts to bat it away, but his arms aren’t working like they should and it only rises a few inches off the bed.

"It'll all be over soon, son-“ Says the man with the glasses. “-just hold still—“

_She’s crying, whimpering around the piece of tape he’s wrapped around her mouth when he lays her down on the concrete floor. Her dark eyes are glossy and terrified, long lashes wet with tears. There’s a dark trail of blood running down the side of her face— from when he hit her. “Shhh.” He says. He feels so calm, no anger, no fear. Nothing- nothing but His command. But she isn’t calming. In fact, her struggling is getting worse, her whimpers louder. He feels a twinge of frustration pierce the dreamy calm. Annoyed, he takes her by the shoulders and pushes them down— a loud noise that echoes off of the walls. The struggling stops immediately. “Don’t be afraid.” He tells her. “It’ll be over soon. Just stay very still.” From the shadows in the corners of the room, there’s a low sound. A growl._

He remembers. He remembers all of it, every sickening detail coming back to him in a nauseating rush of sights, sounds, feelings, and colors. Crashing his car. The Steelworks. Heather’s muffled screaming as he stood back and _watched_. Dinner at the Holloway’s. Heather- smashing a bottle on the back of her father’s head. All of them, every scream, every pair of empty eyes. Their stained, empty clothing piling up on the floor of the Steelworks- one after the other as they shake and dissolve into an amorphous mass of blood and bones. _Him_.

Billy throws his head back and screams.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ugh, guys, I just keep adding chapters to this monster but it doesn’t seem to want to find a suitable stopping place! Thank you guys so much for reading! Comments? Pretty please (:


	4. four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Billy sneaks out of the hospital.

The worst part about it, Billy thinks, is that Max comes to visit him. Every. Single. Day. Usually, it's in the afternoon, just after three o'clock. Coincidentally, three o'clock is the time that Billy knows Susan gets off of work. She's a secretary- or is it an accountant? He can't keep it straight. Tell the truth, he doesn't really care. Billy doesn't care about much anymore. The morphine's nice, though. At first, the initial days after it all came back, they'd had him on a pretty high dose. He'd torn the stitches on his lower back and right side and broke the doctor's glasses, or so they told him. Those two days were fuzzy, like floating on a cloud. Max's face would swim past him sometimes. Sometimes, it was his mother's face. Sometimes Neil.

After that, they'd started weaning him off of the morphine. Two days passed. Max came both days. And then the day after that. And the day after that. The fourth day, he was nauseated, and Max sat in her chair several feet away from the bed watching him puke into a bucket for 20 minutes. Pissed off and teary-eyed with the taste of bile still lingering on his tongue, Billy had demanded to know 'why she still fucking cared'. Predictably, she'd rolled her eyes, shoved the chair back, and stomped out of the hospital room, the door banging against the wall in her wake. She still came the next day, though. Billy had pretended to be asleep, knowing damn well that he wasn't fooling either of them.

The seventh day of Billy's internment at Hawkins General Hospital, his dad comes to visit. It's the morning, and Neil is as cold and dismissive as ever, his eyes lingering first on the IV stand and its various tubage on the right side of the hospital bed, then on the bowl of oatmeal that Billy's been pushing around with his spoon for the better part of an hour, now. A minute passes. A minute and a half. The sound of the clock ticking in Billy's ears is so loud that it might as well be a march- the march of a hundred feet shuffling down into the dank dark, and Billy- Billy can't fucking do this for one more fucking second.

"Planning on saying anything, or are you just going to stare?" Billy asks, and his voice is so insolent, so insolent and so empty at the same time. _Fuck you._ He thinks, but he can't quite summon the vitriol. _Fuck you_.

Neil pauses, and his cold eyes come to rest on his son's face, the bandage high on his cheek; the bruiselike shadows under his eyes because Billy can't fucking _sleep_. Or- maybe, he's sleeping too much. Like he said: He can't keep it straight anymore. 

"Susan said I should come see you." Neil says, his voice calm and perfunctory, almost as if this had been the last thing on his list of errands and he'd simply been in the area. He doesn't meet Billy's eye- not once, and Billy feels a swell of _something_ \- something slick and stomach-turning coiling in the pit of his belly. It could be anger, but in an instant, it's gone, and Billy just feels nauseated even though there's nothing left in his stomach that he can throw up. "I've seen enough." Neil says, and turns to go. Billy watches him leave, hears the click of his polished shoes on the linoleum and the squeak of the door's handle, the creak of its hinges. He's gone a moment later.

Max doesn't come that afternoon, and Billy spends most of his time staring up at the ceiling, trying very hard to think about nothing.

* * *

He can't sleep that night. It's around 2 AM when he finally sits up, swings his legs out of the tangled blankets, and plants his feet on the chilly linoleum floor. Getting the IV out is a fucking bitch. Walking is an even bigger bitch. Regardless, he manages to avoid the wandering nurses busily doing their duties, and bypasses the nurse's station. He makes for the stairwell. 

Turns out that stairs are an even bigger bitch than walking, especially on Billy's unsteady baby deer legs. It takes him the better part of ten minutes to descend just two flights of stairs, and by the time he makes it to the ground floor, he's erupted into a cold sweat, somehow hot and cold at once. Billy pushes on. It's only after he makes it past the lobby and front desk, mercifully empty at this time of night, and into the antechamber between lobby and the outside that he realizes that he isn't wearing much more than a flimsy cotton hospital gown, held closed by two little strings tied at the back of his neck and patterned with a series of vaguely-ugly blue diamonds.

He's unsteady on his feet; he's shockingly weak, and _anyone_ could see him like this. 'Go back', says the quiet voice at the back of his head.

Billy bows his head, like a bull getting ready to impale a matador on its horns, grits his teeth, and pushes stubbornly past the hospital's glass doors out into the night air. He stops, squinting at the yellow glare of the abovehead streetlight, then turns right. For a long time, he walks in a straight line on the sidewalk, his legs growing steadily weaker beneath him. Once, he stumbles past a pair of homeless men at a bus-stop who stare at him with wide, animal eyes, but he pushes on, too tired to be unnerved.

Bizarrely, it feels right. Like penance. Like he's finally putting some distance between himself and the memories (the ' _not-his-memories_ ') that dog his dreams. A peculiar calm falls over him as he continues to walk, each step a little more unsteady, but the _thing_ that's been building inside of him, that unnamed feeling, is finally starting to empty, leaving something flat and featureless behind. Billy walks for as long as he can, which, admittedly, is a pitiful distance, barely three fourths of a mile, by the end of which his legs feel fit to give out underneath him. It's 80 degrees out, and he's shivering.

Billy is comfortably numb when he hears, distantly, the rumble of an approaching car. At first, he doesn't pay it that much heed. One or two cars have passed already, but like all small towns, the inhabitants of Hawkins' dearest wish is to preserve the peace, and so far, nobody has gone so far as to stop to interrogate the crazy mental-asylum escapee roaming the streets at 3:00 in the morning.

The car passes him. Billy keeps on walking, though, perhaps, at this point, it's more of a shamble. Then the rear lights light up red as the car, a reddish (brownish.?) BMW screeches to a halt. And then it reverses. The window rolls down.

It's Steve Harrington.

"Hargrove.?" He says cautiously, half-greeting, half-question.

"Fuck off, Harrington." Billy says without inflection, the words more reaction than actual resentment, then nearly trips over a sewer grate. He rights himself using the nearest available surface, which happens to be a street lamp, and continues to wobble onward. The BMW keeps pace with him, a feeling in the air like the other wants to say something but doesn't quite know how to word it. A few more minutes of this, and Billy is almost feeling actual irritation.

"Fuck _off_ , Harrington." He growls, just as Steve blurts: "You need to go back to the hospital."

Both of them stop to look at each other, Billy, with suspicion, taking in Steve's horribly-bruised face and Steve, with equal suspicion, who keeps opening and closing his mouth like a fish, stupid eyebrows furrowed over his stupid brown eyes like he's actually _concerned_ , and Billy _is_ actually irritated now, because he doesn't need pity from _Steve fucking Harrington_.

"Listen, man-" Steve tries again, and he's so earnest that Billy feels himself snap. "I don't want your help!" He roars, exhaustion forgotten in the face of the fearful rush of rage that's overtaken him.

"Do you remember who I am?? I beat in your fucking face last year, Harrington! _I hurt you_! I tried to run your fucking kids over, and if Max hadn't stabbed me with that needle, you might not still be here tonight! You don't get to _help me_ , Harrington! I tried to kill _all of you_! I hurt Max, and I hurt her stupid kid friends, and I hurt _her_ -" -the dark-eyed girl, the one who haunts his dreams; whispers of ' _seven feet_ ' and ' _you were happy_ '-

"I don't want your fucking help, okay?? So do us both a favor and _fuck off_!!" The last two words echo once or twice off of the buildings around them, then, it's just the furious pound of his heart in his ears. _ba-boom, ba-boom, ba-boom, ba-boom..._ Billy doesn't _deserve_ any of their help. Least of all Steve Harrington's. Billy is damaged goods. He's always been damaged goods, always a little cracked in the head ever since she left; left in the night, and left him behind.

Steve is silent, hands clenching the steering wheel in a white-knuckled grip, but he's not driving away like Billy wants him to; like Billy _needs_ him to. He's so used to people doing what he wants, even if that's pushing them away, that the expectant silence makes him uneasy. Steve's still not saying anything, and even worse, he keeps _looking_ at Billy, who looks right back because he has to. Brown on blue. After what seems like an eternity, he speaks.

"This isn't about you." Steve says, an odd light in his eyes, but at least he's not looking at Billy like he's _concerned_ anymore. No, this light is more focused. Billy feels himself relax infinitesimally. "You know what I've been doing every afternoon for the last week?" And, oh, _fuck_. "I've been picking up Max. Guess from where?"

"Hawkins General Hospital." Steve continued, building momentum with every word, like a stone rolling down a hill that just kept getting steeper and steeper. "You know why? Because she spends every fucking afternoon with you, Billy. But, no- this isn't about _you_. It's about _Max_ , and what she'll do to me if she finds out that her asshole of a brother ran away from the hospital and caught hypothermia in 80 degree weather because he wouldn't _get in the fucking car._ " And with the last words, Steve Harrington unclenches his hands from the steering wheel, leans across the passenger seat, and wrenches the door open, brown eyes positively blazing.

"Get in the fucking car, Hargrove."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, one minute I'm writing, the next, there's Harringrove all over my screen. The thing is, though, that I can't even apologize. However-!! I can apologize for adding another chapter because I'm just horrible that way. It's the last one, I swear!  
> On another note, I'd like to thank all of you who commented so far! I've been really pleasantly surprised at all the attention this fic has gotten, so I hope you guys can keep enjoying wherever the road takes us.  
> Comments? Pretty please?


End file.
